I was recently informed (h/t Peter) that Greenhouse Sensation was no longer trading and the parent company (Nutriculture UK Ltd) was in administration. There is a good write-up of the situation, as it stands, here.
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| Photo 1: Quadgrows and Salad/Veg Planters by Greenhouse Sensation |
This is disappointing on several counts: (i) the products themselves were excellent and good value, and (ii) where do we now go for consumables and replacement parts?
Fortunately, the planters themselves are robustly built and should last a good few years. I have been using Quadgrows since 2015 and they are still as good as new. Since there are no moving parts (with the odd exception) the hardware will last a good many years with care.
There are two obvious consumables: the Nutrigrow Plant Food and the Feeder Mats. I will discuss options for these below.
It is possible the 'company' may yet resurrect itself and start trading again once it is debt-free. It would not be the first time such a thing happened. So I advise you to keep a lookout for any news - I will post something on this blog should I hear anything.
Let's look at some alternatives for the Feeder Mats and Plant Nutrients.
Feeder Mats:
Feeder mats are just capillary matting cut into the appropriate shape. Capillary matting is available from a large number of suppliers: try here, here, here, here and here as well as your local garden centre.
Feeder mats can also be reused; typically, I re-use my feeder mats for at least three growing seasons.
At the end of the growing season, I remove any top growth and tip the contents of the Quadgrow pot into a plastic trug (Photo 2) ...
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| Photo 2: Contents of Quadgrow Pot tipped out into a trug |
... before carefully prising the feeder mat away from the soil (coir) and roots. The coir is recovered using a soil sieve and the roots are placed in a hot composter. Recovered coir is spread around the garden (e.g. potting up plants, topping up raised beds, enriching plant holes, mulching) either as is or mixed with homemade compost.
The excess soil is removed from the recovered feeder mats by shaking over the trug (Photo 2) before hanging them up to dry in, for example, a greenhouse, shed, or polytunnel. Photo 3 shows the strip feeder mats from Salad/Veg Planters and the larger Quadgrow feeder mats (bottom right) hung up to dry in my polytunnel. At this point, the feeder mats will contain plenty of residual root material.
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| Photo 3: Feeder Mats Hung Out to Dry |
Once the mats have dried out, any remaining roots are easily removed by rubbing the mats between gloved hands as demonstrated in Video 1.
Video 1: Removing old roots from a used feeder mat
Photos 4 & 5 show the dried-out feeder mat (back and front) prior to rubbing off the old roots while Photo 6 shows the end result.
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| Photo 4: Used Feeder Mat (top) |
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| Photo 5: Used Feeder Mat (bottom) |
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| Photo 6: Recovered Feeder Mat after Rubbing Stage |
The cleaned mats are then stored away for use the following season.
Nutrigrow Plant Food:
Potentially more serious for users of Quadgrows and Salad/Veg Planters would be the loss of the Nutrigrow Plant Food. These nutrient packs are specially formulated for use with the Quadgrow system although they are, in essence, just a soluble nutrient mix. You will be able to find something similar that will do the job. This website says it might have a suitable replacement in the near future.
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| Photo 5: Nutrigrow Plant Food (Packs A & B) from Greenhouse Sensation |
I am in the fortunate position of having sufficient stock of Nutrigrow for this forthcoming growing season. This gives me plenty of time to look for alternatives or for Greenhouse Sensation to rise like a Phoenix from the ashes.
When looking for a Nutrigrow replacement we need to look at the NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium) values first: both their ratios and their final concentration in the dilute nutrient added to the Quadgrows, Salad/Veg Planters, etc. Calcium, magnesium and other trace elements (micronutrients) are also essential and we will need to consider these as well.
NPK values for Nutrigrow A and Nutrigrow B are set out in Table 1. Since these two nutrient mixes are combined in equal amounts, the NPK values for a 1:1 solid mixture are also provided in Table 1.
Table 1: NPK Values for Nutrigrow A & B and a 50:50 Mixture
For simplicity, we can round up the NPK values for the 1:1 mixture to 10-5-20. In terms of the three major plant nutrients (NPK), this means a combined 1:1 solid mixture of Nutrigrow A + B contains 10% by weight elemental nitrogen (N), 5% by weight phosphorus pentoxide (P2O5), and 20% by weight potassium oxide (K2O). The diluted solutions we add to Quadgrows, etc will have much lower concentrations but the NPK ratio will stay the same.
Nutrigrow plant foods also supply significant amounts of calcium (17.8% by weight as CaO) and magnesium (5.58% by weight as MgO) along with a number of trace elements: boron, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum, and zinc. Many commercially-available plant foods contain all these additional nutrients with the exception of calcium. For example, This product ...
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| Photo 6: Gro-Sure Soluble Plant Food |
... has an NPK of 12.5-5-25 plus added magnesium and trace elements (Photo 7). But no calcium!
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| Photo 7: Gro-Sure Nutrient Concentrations |
The NPK value of Gro-Sure (12.5-5-25) is close enough to that of Greenhouse Sensation's Nutrigrow (10-5-20) that it offers a potential replacement if we could find a way of boosting its calcium levels.
Thompson and Morgan do a range of plant foods under the Chempak brand name including one called 'Calcium'.
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| Photo 8: Chempak Calcium Plant Food |
Nutrigrow A + B comes in individual 250 g packs that are dissolved in 2.5 litres of water to give the Stock Solutions. An aliquot (6 ml) of each stock solution (total 12 ml) is diluted up to 1 litre with water to obtain the final nutrient solution added to the Quadgrow reservoirs. To simplify the arithmetic, we will assume a hypothetical solid 1:1 Nutrigrow mixture of A + B has an NPK value of 10-5-20 (see Table 1 and the following paragraph). Working through the dilutions to prepare the stock solutions and the final feed solutions, I calculate the NPK concentrations in the Quadgrow feed solutions to be:
Nitrogen (total): 0.12 g/L
Phosphorus (as P2O5): 0.06g/L
Potassium (as K2O): 0.24 g/L
If using an alternative plant food, these are the target NPK concentrations for the final solutions use to top up the Quadgrow reservoirs. This means, for example, that the Gro-Sure plant food (Photos 6 & 7) can be used at twice its recommended dilution of 10 g per 4.5 litre watering can (Photo 7).
While searching for Nutrigrow alternatives, I came across these two products, Master Grow and Master Bloom, which are both available from Amazon. These products mimic the Nutrigrow plant foods from Greenhouse Sensation in having two solutions (A + B) that provide all the necessary nutrients including calcium. They are supplied as stock solutions, rather than solids, in various sizes from 1 litre upwards and are more expensive than Nutrigrow though you may prefer the convenience of ready-made stock solutions.
The NPK ratios for a 1:1 mixture of Nutrigrow A + B is 2-1-4 (or 10-5-20) which is close to the NPK values for Master Grow (Table 2) and Master Bloom (Table 3); thus making either product an option for replacing Nutrigrow.
Table 2: NPK Values for Master Grow A & B Solutions
Table 3: NPK Values for Master Bloom A & B Solutions
The Master Grow/Bloom NPK concentrations (see Tables 2 & 3) are much lower than the Nutrigrow stock solutions (by a factor about 10 times) which needs to be taken into account when preparing the final dilution.
If I find any other alternatives to Nutrigrow, I will prepare another post.
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